The Iranian power struggle, cont’d: Pass the popcorn. Khameini and Mad Mahmoud are still at it. Whichever one wins, it’s a win for Iran’s enemies. Woot!
Your daily dose of anti-Israel bias: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Blah, blah, blah. Netanyahu, bad, Abbas, good. We get it, AP.
And yet, they the World Bank dumped Wolfowitz for giving his girlfriend a raise on the books: The IMF can’t figure out if they should ask the man accused of raping a hotel maid to step down. Oh, those enlightened Europeans! So much more intelligent, worldly, and cultivated than us crude Yanks. Say, you know what’s the funniest thing about this whole bit? The Socialist Party candidate for president of France was staying in a $3,000 a night hotel suite. Yeah, that’s showing those bourgeoise capitalists. (Kewl. I just spelled that correctly myself, without the autocorrect feature. I’m ready for my closeup, Mr. DeMille.)
So, how much do they pay Tom Friedman to write this crap? Seriously, if this were a high school essay I’d flunk it on these lines alone:
Israel is in a dangerous situation. For the first time in its history, it has bad relations with all three regional superpowers — Turkey, Iran and Egypt — plus rapidly eroding support in Europe. America is Israel’s only friend today. These strains are not all Israel’s fault by any means, especially with Iran, but Israel will never improve ties with Egypt, Turkey and Europe without a more serious effort to safely get out of the West Bank.
So, what, Israel had good relations with the Middle Eastern superpowers in 1948, 1956, 1967, 1973, and, well, pretty much every year since its modern inception? Really? Israel never had good relations with Egypt. Israel had a decent relationship with the Shah of Iran, but that changed in 1979. But seriously, does Friedman not read anything that clashes with his worldview? Thousands of Egyptians protesting Israel’s existence, not the flimsy excuse of the “occupation,” only last week? Does that ring a bell?
Moron.
This is kind of classic:
I repeat: It may not be possible. But Netanyahu has not spent his time in office using Israel’s creativity to find ways to do such a deal. He has spent his time trying to avoid such a deal — and everyone knows it. No one is fooled.
For 6 months Netanyahu observed a settlement freeze in order to get Abbas back to the table. Abbas returned with a few weeks to go and of course nothing happened. And Netanyahu is the one avoiding a deal? Lots of folks are like Friedman; lots of folks are fooled. And Barry Rubin is correct on this:
So a big part of Israel’s difficulty is that people like Friedman are perpetuating anti-Israel lies instead of attacking them.
I notice that today the boy columnist actually (I think for the first time) mentioned the Fatah-Hamas agreement. How did he characterize it?
And it is equally silly for the Palestinians to be going to the United Nations for a state when they need to be persuading Israelis why a Hamas-Fatah rapprochement is in their security interest.
The “moderate” Palestinians just repudiated the peace process and he wonders if Israel can be convinced if it’s “…in their security interest?”
Friedman condemns imagined Israeli actions and excuses deliberate Palestinian provocations. He’s not stupid. He’s anti-Israel.
To paraphrase Gleen, he’s not pro-peace; he’s on the other side.
I remember reading this a while back, to paraphrase, some national media Jewish reporters typically bend so far over to show “impartiality” to the Israel/Palestinian dilemma that they invariably wind up with their head in their ass. Seriously, can you imagine if the boy wonder began to write the truth about this conflict, and expose the fascist Muslim writings in Arabic, how long would his career last before being called out as “what do you expect from a Jewish writer”!
I made the same mistake you did. Wolfowitz was with the World Bank, not the IMF.
I’m appreciating the symbolism here — what DSK did was very similar to what the IMF does to many African countries.
J.